Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

Right now, bond markets are front of mind for investors everywhere. Sticky inflation and ballooning budget deficits are pushing yields higher, and with the RBA looking likely to hike rates once again and the domestic economy under pressure, the question isn't just which stocks look cheap, it's which ones can actually hold up when the cost of capital keeps rising.

Small caps are particularly exposed in this environment and get hit harder when sentiment turns. But within this universe, there are always names with the earnings quality, balance sheet strength, or structural tailwinds to hold their ground.

To find which ones can weather the storm, Matthew Nicholas from 1851 Capital and Nick Sladen from LSN Capital Partners are running the ruler over four small caps, and sharing a high-conviction pick each of their own.

No, that's not a typo in the headline.

We're currently running our Commodities in Focus series, so this episode of Buy Hold Sell is a commodities takeover.

We're also departing slightly from our traditional format, with our guests pitching stocks that they like across five different commodities segments.

That's right, it's wall-to-wall buys for this episode - because who wants holds and sells when it comes to commodities stocks.

Sharing their best and brightest picks across the precious metal, bulk, base metal, battery/energy transition metal, and energy segments are Romano Sala Tenna from Katana Asset Management and Emanuel Datt from Datt Capital.

Please note, this episode was recorded Wednesday, 9 September 2026

  

Another reporting season is behind us and now all that's left to do is assess the fallout.

In this special reporting season edition of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Joe Wright from Airlie Funds Management and Charles Story from WaveStone Capital to assess the large cap winners and losers from reporting season, and some other large cap picks that the market may have missed. 

Reporting season is done and dusted for another six months. And as my colleagues have pointed out in their respective wrap-ups, for all the angst heading in, Australian companies came out of it in better shape than many expected.

The backdrop, however, is a different story. Bond yields have pushed higher, the consumer is weakening, inflation remains sticky, and uncertainty is the only certainty on the horizon. If you had to sum it up in one line: it's tough out there.

We kick off this two-part reporting season wrap-up of Buy Hold Sell with the small caps, and in light of the doom and gloom, we asked our guests to bring a positive insight they took from the season. For Ben Richards of Seneca, it was the breadth of the market, with the Small Ordinaries rising 6% while the ASX 200 remained broadly flat. For Steve Johnson from Forager Funds, it was the return to form for software companies - reliable revenue, improving margins, and the SaaS apocalypse narrative finally creating some discipline in the space.

We unpack six small-cap stocks in this episode, the ones who were solid from the ones who were sold off, and sort out the winners form the losers (plus a few bonus picks).

Keep an eye out for our next episode with Tom Stelzer covering the large caps.

Since 1926, 17 of the top 20 US companies by annualised returns were founder-led at at least one point in their history, and many remain so today. 

Investors willing to back the right founders over time have been richly-rewarded, and a quick look at the list of the world's most valuable companies suggests that has never been more true than it is today. 

But what makes founder-led businesses so successful, and which founder-led or formerly-founder led companies are worth a look right now? 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give their calls on three distinctive founder-led businesses, and share a founder-led stock pick of their own. 

It's fair to say the world's biggest stocks are quietly putting the "magnificent" back in their Mag 7 moniker.

Against the backdrop of an ever-escalating AI arms race, the Mag 7 are posting record revenues and record capex, but which ones are well-placed for this brave new world, and which could fall behind?

In this bumper Mag 7 special of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give big calls on the biggest companies in the world. 

Thematic ETFs offer something that broad index funds can't - a concentrated, conviction-driven vehicle built on the belief that a particular trend will define the future. Just look at the space tech ETFs that launched this year. But as we know, what's in favour today can be out of favour tomorrow. Markets follow narratives, and yesterday's hot thing can become next year's toxic ex. 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Adam Dawes from Shaw and Partners and Andrew Wielandt from DP Wealth Advisory sort the hot from the not, the break-ups from the make-ups, across six thematic ETFs in technology, semiconductors, healthcare, cryptocurrency and property. 

This episode was filmed Friday 14th August, 2026.

A Livewire reader recently reached out to us to suggest now is the time for investors to be looking for those durable businesses that could offer some resistance to things like AI, rate hikes and oil prices.

The ASX industrials sector seems an obvious place to look, given it's full of stable companies that have endured through the years. But many industrials stocks are also directly exposed to those same macro factors that have help make equities markets a bit of a minefield. 

So how do you find the stocks that can deliver resilience? 

In this episode of Livewire's Buy Hold Sell, Hailey Kim from Wilson Asset Management and Daniel Moore from IML join Livewire's Tom Stelzer to dive into three heavyweight industrial stocks that could offer that durability right now, as well as a pick each of their own.

The Telstra outage of a few weeks ago was a fitting bookend to FY26 the ASX communications sector. It may have fared better than tech and healthcare, but the sector ended the financial year down 12.5% as macro, structural and cyclical threats took their toll. 

So what does the next year offer? 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Livewire's Tom Stelzer is joined by IML's Daniel Moore and Wilson Asset Management's Hailey Kim to dissect three communication names and decide if they're worth picking up or letting go through to voicemail. 

They also each bring a stock pick of their own - one an entertainment business with strong assets and a beaten-down market leader with double-digit earnings growth.

Late last year, more than 2,700 Livewire readers nominated their favourite income stocks for the year ahead. We already ran the ruler over the first half of that list - you can find that episode here. Now we're back for the second half.

A lot has changed in the past six months, so there's no better time to take stock, so to speak. Geopolitical tensions have rattled commodity prices, bond yields have pushed higher, and the question of what actually makes a reliable income stock has never felt more relevant. A high yield can be a gift, or it can be a trap. 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Hugh Dive from Atlas Funds Management and Jason Teh from Vertium Asset Management are back to debate the remaining names on the reader-favourites list, separating the sustainable stories from those whose thesis haven't aged as well as investors might have hoped. They also share one income idea each to freshen up the list for the second half of the year. 

This episode was filmed Wednesday 22nd July 2026.